It's Not Digital. It's Personal.

February 04, 2013

I still remember the days when I was totally excited animating my first gif banners and playing around with IP addresses as the most valuable form of personalization out there. Those were the days when people used aliases to log on to AOL, to make sure their identities were not revealed when surfing the web. When email addresses rarely contained the name of the owner. When my mom would not even dream of typing-in her credit card to make an online purchase, even if my life depended on it.

It hasn’t been that long. And a lot has changed. Actually, it’s the opposite now.

We’ve grown used to providing huge amounts of personal information about ourselves, and about what we do on a daily basis, in exchange for any sort of access, services, and personalization.

As we go through our everyday routines, our phones, our TV’s, the laptops we use, the sport gear we wear and the cars we drive are collecting, analyzing and sharing data about each one of us in real-time. Everything we do is becoming valuable information.

Today I read that WeMo, a fairly new product from Belkin, continues to expand its family of accessible products for home automation.

If you go to their website you can find out all about WeMo. You’ll read that it is a family of simple and customizable products that allow you to control home electronics from anywhere. They say: "the Belkin Connected Home is a place where life is easier, more fun, less work. Walk into a room and the lights come on. When you come home the air conditioner is on, and the house is comfortable." They tempt you with a "just plug your lamp, or fan, or curling iron or stereo (almost anything) into the WeMo Switch, and you're ready to control it (from your phone or tablet) with the WeMo app."

And then, they invite you to discover cool ways people are using WeMo. For example, you learn that people are connecting WeMo to their instagram feed, so that each photo by anyone tagged toggles a light in their home on and off.

Think about this: home is the center of our lives. And from now on, everything you do is being collected and analyzed by Belkin. Everything. Think about the massive amount of granular information you will be shipping to Belkin’s servers by the minute once you’ve installed a $99 WeMo home automation system.

I’m excited. Considering everything it does, at $99, WeMo will become a sensation. Pretty soon, everyone will have one. Pretty soon, I will be able to personalize the hell out of my gif banners and move on from IP addresses being the most advanced form of personalization.

Yes. Go ahead, get the new WeMo. It’s cool, convenient, and everyone is doing it. My mom has two already. She bought them online with her credit card.

Lucas Peon

Lucas is an Argentinian creative director who has lived in France, Chile, Brazil, Mexico, and most recently the United States where he managed an 80-strong creative team developing award-winning global work for numerous Procter & Gamble brands. Today, he is Executive Creative Director for POSSIBLE London, leading an outstanding team of creative directors, art directors, designers, writers, and UX experts over key global accounts such as Shell, Canon, Danone, and Coca-Cola.